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Thursday, January 7, 2016

Visa and Maybank Launches Malaysia’s First Contactless Wearable

Visa and Maybank today launched Maybank Visa Payband, the first contactless wearable in Malaysia. Maybank Visa Payband allows users to conduct contactless payments in a matter of seconds, leveraging on Visa’s payWave contactless technology, at more than 1,000 locations across the country.

Malaysians are moving towards a cashless society and it is prevalent based on the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study. Based on the Study 95 per cent of Malaysian respondents said that they are more likely to visit a store that accepted contactless payments over one that did not, an increase of 7 per cent as compared to 2014.

“Visa is pleased to partner with Maybank to launch Malaysia’s first contactless payment wearable. We believe that the adoption of a contactless payment wearable will be well received by Malaysians and be used to displace cash particularly at events, concerts and theme parks, making it easier and more convenient for consumers. To be able to drive Malaysia to become a cashless society, it is important that we take steps to displace cash at places that are traditionally heavy on cash, particularly at events and theme parks, where payment such as entrance fees and drinks are small ticket payments,” said Mr. Ng Kong Boon, Visa Country Manager for Malaysia.

“Since we introduced Visa payWave, contactless payments have taken off in Malaysia and we have been working hard with our clients to expand the acceptance and issuance of Visa payWave cards across the country. So far, we have well over 2.5 million Visa payWave cards in circulation and a rapidly growing acceptance footprint. We have also seen year-on-year growth of 250 per cent in the payment volume for Visa payWave transactions as of November 2015,” he added.

Maybank Group Head of Cards & Wealth, Mr. B Ravintharan said the pilot of this new payment innovation will help propel Maybank into the forefront of non-cash and electronic payments.
“At Maybank, we constantly innovate our solutions to enhance the experience for our cardholders. This partnership with Visa to pilot the contactless wearable will allow us to enhance our value proposition to our customers. We are intending to introduce this solution to our cardholders in 2016, and we believe that this wearable will be popular amongst our customers because they no longer need to carry cash in order to make payments. Furthermore, merchants or event organisers will also be able to operate more efficiently at large scale events because contactless payment speeds up the payment process and reduces queue,” added Ravintharan.

“We see much potential and opportunity for such wearables to create convenient and relevant payment experiences that truly change the way people make their day-to-day payments.”